New York Markets After Hours

White House to review terrorism watch-list procedures

U.S. also looking at detection capabilities after PETN gets on plane

By

AlistairBarr

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama has ordered a review of terrorism watch list procedures after an alleged attempt by a Nigerian man to detonate a bomb on a passenger plane as it landed in Detroit, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday.

The U.S. government is also reviewing the ability of airport security to detect dangerous substances because the man was carrying the high-explosive PETN, Gibbs added in an interview on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

On Friday, Umar Farouk Abdulmutullab, 23, boarded Northwest Airlines flight 253 in Amsterdam, an Airbus 330 bound for Detroit with 278 passengers and 11 crew members. Passengers told news services that late in the flight, Abdulmutullab spent 20 minutes in the bathroom, and then returned to his seat, complained of stomach upset, and pulled a blanket over himself.

As the plane was preparing to land, they heard a popping noise, smelled smoke, and spotted Abdulmutullab's pants and the wall of the plane on fire. Flight crew members used extinguishers to put out the flames and passengers subdued Abdulmutullab, reports said. The plane landed safely.

The FBI on Saturday filed a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Detroit, charging Abdulmutullab with a "willful attempt to destroy an aircraft" and placing an explosive device on a plane.

The complaint says that attached to Abdulmutullab's body was a device containing the high explosive PETN. Abdulmutullab was arrested and taken for treatment for burns at University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, and U.S. District Judge Paul Borman read him the charges there.

The suspect's name appeared in a U.S. database of terror-related individuals, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment. But reports say that none of the information the government had on Abdulmutullab warranted placing him on the U.S.'s official terror watch list or no-fly list.

The database of terror-related individuals contains about 550,000 names, while the no-fly list has roughly 4,000 on it, Gibbs said Sunday.

In the wake of the incident, Gibbs said the government is conducting two "look back" reviews.

One will review watch-listing procedures to check if authorities did everything they could have with the information they had, he explained.

Abdulmutullab was put on the larger watch list in November, Gibbs noted. Media reports say that AbdulMutullab's father, a prominent Nigerian banker, had warned U.S. and Nigerian authorities last month that his son had developed extreme religious views.

"How does a person on terrorism watch list get a U.S. visa? Particularly when his father was concerned about his son's proclivities," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on Stephanopoulos' program. "There's much to investigate here."

McConnell also said it "makes common sense" that people on terror-related databases should automatically be subject to additional security at airports.

The other review will focus on "detection capabilities" to investigate how someone managed to get on a plane in Amsterdam with something as dangerous at PETN, Gibbs said.

PETN is the same explosive that Richard Reid, a London-born convert to Islam, attempted to ignite in his shoe aboard an American Airlines flight in December 2001, media reports said.

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